Inbound selling takes the inbound philosophy and integrates it into a modern sales process to deliver a superior buying experience. Inbound salespeople are respectful, friendly, and human, and focus on helping first. They listen to buyer feedback, make thoughtful recommendations, and leverage strategic content to provide the right information at the right time. They are careful to move at the buyer's pace and look to create a long-term relationship with good fit customers.

Two key ideas define inbound selling: (1) inbound sales teams base their entire strategy on coordinating the buyer journey, and (2) inbound sales teams deliver information in the buyer's context and personalize the whole sales experience, rather than running the same sales process for everyone.

Table 20.1 shows some of the significant differences between traditional sales and inbound sales.

Inbound marketing became popular more than 10 years ago, because modern marketers recognized the new era of buyer behavior and wanted to change traditional marketing tactics and treat buyers more like human beings. Unfortunately, salespeople were slow to take advantage of this evolution. Instead of modifying the sales process to accommodate buyer control, most salespeople kept doing what they had always done.

Regardless of the difficulty getting buyers to return calls, reply to an email, meet in person, and move deals quickly, most salespeople continued to struggle along the same path. In 2012, a few early adopters saw an opportunity to leverage the inbound philosophy and started to use inbound sales techniques to differentiate the way they connected to prospects. They understood that a large percentage of a buyer's journey was being conducted before a salesperson became involved. They decided to offer free help, post educational content, leverage social media for effective outreach, learn the ideal buyer persona, study the best material to deliver at each stage of the buyer journey, prioritize specific opportunities, and act as consultants. They also decided to treat everyone differently, personalize the sales process, and, most importantly, give the buyer control.

In 2015, Dan wrote a blog article, “Always Be Closing Is Dead: How to Always Be Helping,” which described the impact that inbound has on the sales process.¹ Today, we know the inbound sales process works. It creates a superior customer experience for the buyer, helps build a large pool of available prospects for the seller, and is a key factor in helping salespeople exceed their quota.

What does inbound selling mean for a business owner or CEO?

If your sales reps are still using a traditional sales playbook, you may be frustrating your prospects and customers. That could have a more significant impact than it did 10 years ago. In the old days, an overly aggressive salesperson received a nasty letter from a customer or a call from his sales manager telling him to knock it off, then went back and duplicated the process with the next prospect. Today, frustrated buyers post their thoughts and ideas on social media for the entire world to see. Salespeople live and die by their company's online reputation.

Inbound selling also improves sales productivity by eliminating a lot of the low-value activities that take up a lot of your salespeople's time. Inbound sales teams spend most of their time talking with leads who have already shown interest in moving closer to a decision. While traditional salespeople are responsible for talking to everyone, inbound salespeople speak with prospects who have expressed an interest in learning more.

Inbound salespeople talk with more prospects than traditional salespeople do because they use technology to manage automated tasks like follow-up emails and booking meetings, sending out customized proposals, and adding lead intelligence to their CRM. Inbound salespeople dig deep into customer problems through a discovery process rather than showing a product demo. Inbound salespeople use social media to generate a wide audience, connect good fit prospects at the top of the funnel so they can collaborate, and deliver strategic content to the right part of the sales process.

Brian Signorelli, author of Inbound Selling: How to Change the Way You Sell to Match How People Buy, says:

Inbound selling is a modern, buyer-centric form of sales where the seller prioritizes the buyer's needs ahead of their own. Inbound salespeople focus on the buyer's problem and context above all else. The inbound salesperson customizes their sales process and solution, should one exist. Smart leaders will take the time to learn about it, teach your sales reps how to become inbound sellers, and start using this method as a competitive advantage for your company in the age of the empowered buyer.²

Sales leaders should consider an inbound selling approach if they have these problems:

• They lack a defined sales process that is routinely followed, measured, and improved.
• Executives can't determine if leads are being followed up appropriately and think opportunities may be slipping through the cracks.
• Salespeople have a hard time connecting with targeted prospects.
• Sales leadership needs to get more opportunities in the pipeline.
• The sales team spends a lot of time on low-value activities like individual one-off emails, meaningless sales calls, and leaving voice messages that are never returned.

Developing an Inbound Sales Process

To build an inbound sales process, start with evaluating your current sales model. Do your salespeople connect face-to-face or over the phone? How often do they visit customers face-to-face? Can you automate more of the connection and discovery process? Does your sales organization carry a quota? What is the percentage of salespeople hitting the quota? Do you have salespeople in the group that routinely miss quota and may not be a good fit with your organization? Do your salespeople focus on a vertical market or geographic territory? Does your sales team have enough leads or do they need more?

Once you review the organizational structure, assess individual sales productivity. How much time does a salesperson spend on customer-facing functions versus low-value administrative work? Do they have access to the tools that they need to be effective, like an easy-to-use CRM and the ability to send personalized emails? Do they have the ability to source information about good fit prospects? Do they understand the ideal buyer profile that indicates a right fit customer that provides the best long-term value for the company? Do they know the ideal buyer personas? Do they understand the emotional reasons that prospects are interested in solving the problem?

The more information available describing the ideal buyer profile, the more effective salespeople can be. An example of an ideal buyer profile is a large enterprise software company headquartered in Chicago with over 2,000 employees, six international sales offices, and more than 20 training locations selling restaurant inventory management software to regional restaurant chains.

An example of the ideal buyer persona would be the IT director, located in Dublin, responsible for collaboration at all offices, 35 years old, in her first management job, and who makes vendor selections for improving team and customer communications and collaboration.

The ideal buyer profile answers questions like:

• Is the company primarily B2B or B2C?
• What industries get the most value from solving this problem?
• Does one size of company need our help more than another?
• What defines size? Employees, locations, revenue?
• Does it matter where they are located?
• Do they use a particular technology, product, or service relating to what you offer?
• What other characteristics make them the customer?

Modern salespeople still engage with other influencers within an ideal buyer profile that do not fit the exact buyer persona, because influencers may be doing preliminary research or the decision is competitive with an established vendor.

An inbound salesperson creates a strategic process to reach, connect, discover, and understand where a buyer is in the process, their previous experience, and the help they need to make the right decision. Knowledge of the buyer profile makes it easy to create a compelling and engaging buyer experience. Inbound salespeople engage good fit prospects, understand the buyer's industry-specific vocabulary, recognize your value proposition, and have a greater appreciation for your expertise.

An inbound salesperson tries to make a psychological connection with the buyer, understanding the underlying reasons why a prospect needs to move forward and solve a problem.

A typical inbound sales process consists of four stages:

1. Identify
2. Connect
3. Explore
4. Advise (including negotiation and closing)

These stages match up directly with the inbound buyer's journey. Identify, Connect, Explore, and Advise each describe the types of activities that happen in the stages that ultimately lead to a buying decision (see Figure 20.1).

Identify

In the Identify stage, inbound salespeople use technology and automation to identify good fit companies that correspond to the ideal buyer profile. Even if salespeople have a defined territory, they need to identify the best fit prospects in this stage. Modern buyers want to work with sellers who know their business, have relevant references, and are familiar with common buyer problems. Good fit companies that are not active in the sales process can be nurtured by marketing via account-based marketing.

The Identify stage is a shared responsibility between marketing and sales.

Connect

As good fit prospects become more active in pursuing a solution, they are ready to connect with your sales organization. Inbound sales people use lead notification and lead intelligence to professionally connect with good fit companies.

Traditional salespeople cold call or send undifferentiated emails to all leads with the same message and pace regardless of the fit or the persona. Inbound salespeople start out with research on the company and contact. They create a sequence of emails and phone calls that offer multiple connections over a week to 10 days. They personalize the correspondence to provide value in the first interaction. They create helpful messages that show that they are familiar with the company and connect with the contact and offer to help. If the contact isn't interested in connecting, that is OK.

The Connect stage is about improving awareness, showing expertise, offering help and guidance, and letting the buyer determine if they are ready to go to the next stage.

Explore

Led by the salesperson, the Explore stage of the inbound sales process consists of a Discovery meeting to dig in deeper about the problem, its severity, and the solution required to fix the problem. Asking appropriate questions, an inbound salesperson should identify goals, plans, and challenges; define the severity of the pain; review previous attempts to solve the problem; evaluate a reasonable return on investment; understand purchase criteria; and determine the budget and purchasing process.

Rather than show up and give a product demo, an inbound salesperson asks a series of questions to determine the experience, expectations, and timeline of the prospect. This is the stage when the salesperson develops an in-depth understanding of the buyer's issues, offers assistance, and makes sure the solution can solve the buyer's problem. It's less about the product features and more about the process of learning, evaluating, and deciding to proceed to jointly solve the problem.

Advise

Inbound salespeople today are like consultants, offering helpful information and recommendations customized to the buyer's situation. In the Advise stage, the salesperson presents a plan that shows that they understand the fundamental problem, reviews previously stated goals to determine any changes, explains the installation and deployment of the product, points out potential roadblocks, and defines the regularity of follow up. Inbound sales connects all the dots from the buyer's perspective.

The Advise stage is where the buyer has to make three decisions.

1. Do I have everything I need to solve this problem?
2. If I move forward, what solutions should I consider?
3. Who will I work with if I decide to change and adopt a new approach?

The Advise stage also includes price negotiation and contract review, which should be conducted consistent with inbound beliefs including transparency, People First, and adding value before extracting value.